XML Reference Guide

Mar 14, 2003

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There are so many different versions of and outlooks on RSS that even the very explanation of the acronym can be a subject for confusion. Depending on the version in question, RSS stands for either "RDF Site Summary" or "Rich Site Summary." In either case, it's one of the most popular uses of XML, if not the most popular, on the Internet today.

Whatever you decide it stands for, RSS is a content format that enables site owners (and other content producers) to make their information available to others via syndication. The two most common providers of syndicated content are news sites and weblogs. In either case, syndication enables one site to acquire or display headlines for another site, or an application called an aggregator to show a user what information is available for retrieval. For example, SpaceToday.net makes their daily headlines available in an XML file such as:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE rss PUBLIC "-//Netscape Communications//DTD RSS 0.91//EN"
            "http://my.netscape.com/publish/formats/rss-0.91.dtd">

<rss version="0.91">

<channel>

    <title>spacetoday.net</title>
    <link>http://www.spacetoday.net/</link>
    <description>Space news summaries and links to articles published around 
the web.</description>
    <language>en-us</language>
    <pubDate>Sun, 23 Mar 2003 19:51:10 GMT</pubDate>
    <managingEditor>jeff@spacetoday.net</managingEditor>
    <webMaster>jeff@spacetoday.net</webMaster>

    <image>
        <title>spacetoday.net</title>
        <url>http://www.spacetoday.net/images/spacetoday120x20.gif</url>
        <link>http://www.spacetoday.net/</link>
        <width>120</width>
        <height>20</height>
        <description>Space news summaries and links to articles published 
around the web.</description>
    </image>

    <item>
        <title>NASA Advisory Council expresses skepticism about OSP</title>
        <link>http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1575</link>
        <description>An outside committee that advises NASA said last week that 
they believe plans to pursue...</description>
    </item>

    <item>
        <title>NASA reorganizes shuttle investigation team</title>
        <link>http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1574</link>
        <description>NASA announced Friday afternoon that it had reorganized 
its internal team investigating the loss of...</description>
    </item>

    <item>
        <title>China: no immediate plans for Mars missions</title>
        <link>http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1573</link>
        <description>China's space program has no plans to carry out unmanned 
missions to Mars before...</description>
    </item>

    <item>
        <title>Boeing wins Malaysian satellite contract</title>
        <link>http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1572</link>
        <description>Malaysian communications satellite operator Binariang 
Satellite Systems Sdn. Bhd. announced Friday that it will purchase...</description>
    </item>

    <item>
        <title>NASA selects aurora science mission</title>
        <link>http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1571</link>
        <description>NASA announced Thursday that it has selected a mission to 
study the geomagnetic storms that...</description>
    </item>

</channel>
</rss>

Another site can retrieve that information and display it in a box on their site, as shown in Figure RSS.

Figure An RSS feed accessed by another site.

Several versions of RSS actually float around the Web, but while the concept is generally the same, they are, in fact, significantly different.

The SpaceToday.net feed above uses version 0.91, which is actually the most common version in use at the time of this writing. It consists of an rss element containing a single channel. That channel element contains information about the channel itself, and one or more items, which show up as headlines. Each item carries a title, link, and description, or blurb, that can appear on the receiving site.

The second most common version of RSS is 0.9, which is based on the Resource Definition Framework, RDF. (This is why RSS was originally known as RDF Site Summary.) The structure of an RSS 0.9 file is slightly different, in that it's based on the concept of metadata, or data about data. The same feed, using version 0.9, would look like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
                  xmlns="http://my.netscape.com/rdf/simple/0.9/">

    <channel>
        <title>spacetoday.net</title>
        <link>http://www.spacetoday.net/</link>
        <description>Space news summaries and links to articles published around 
the web.</description>
    </channel>

    <image>
        <title>spacetoday.net</title>
        <url>http://www.spacetoday.net/images/spacetoday120x20.gif</url>
        <link>http://www.spacetoday.net/</link>
    </image>

    <item>
        <title>NASA Advisory Council expresses skepticism about OSP</title>
        <link>http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1575</link>
    </item>

    <item>
        <title>NASA reorganizes shuttle investigation team</title>
        <link>http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1574</link>
    </item>

    <item>
        <title>China: no immediate plans for Mars missions</title>
        <link>http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1573</link>
    </item>

    <item>
        <title>Boeing wins Malaysian satellite contract</title>
        <link>http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1572</link>
    </item>

    <item>
        <title>NASA selects aurora science mission</title>
        <link>http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1571</link>
    </item>
</rdf:RDF>

Version 1.0 of RSS is actually based on version .90, and not .91, and simply adds some optional elements and attributes. Consider, for example, the same feed in version 1.0.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rdf:RDF
      xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
      xmlns="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/"
      xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
      xmlns:syn="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/">

<rss version="0.91">

<channel rdf:about="http://www.spacetoday.net/">

    <title>spacetoday.net</title>
    <link>http://www.spacetoday.net/</link>
    <description>Space news summaries and links to articles published around 
the web.</description>
    <dc:language>en-us</dc:language>
    <dc:date>2003-03-23T19:51</cd:date>
    <dc:creator>jeff@spacetoday.net</dc:creator>
    <dc:publisher>jeff@spacetoday.net</dc:publisher>

    <items>
      <rdf:Seq>
          <rdf:li rdf:resource=" http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1575" />
          <rdf:li rdf:resource=" http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1574" />
          <rdf:li rdf:resource=" http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1573" />
          <rdf:li rdf:resource=" http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1572" />
          <rdf:li rdf:resource=" http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1571" />
      </rdf:Seq>
</channel>

    <image rdf:about="http://www.spacetoday.net/images/spacetoday120x20.gif">
        <title>spacetoday.net</title>
        <url>http://www.spacetoday.net/images/spacetoday120x20.gif</url>
        <link>http://www.spacetoday.net/</link>
    </image>

    <item rdf:about="http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1575">
        <title>NASA Advisory Council expresses skepticism about OSP</title>
        <link>http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1575</link>
        <description>An outside committee that advises NASA said last week that 
they believe plans to pursue...</description>
    </item>

    <item rdf:about="http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1574">
        <title>NASA reorganizes shuttle investigation team</title>
        <link>http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1574</link>
        <description>NASA announced Friday afternoon that it had reorganized 
its internal team investigating the loss of...</description>
    </item>

    <item rdf:about="http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1573">
        <title>China: no immediate plans for Mars missions</title>
        <link>http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1573</link>
        <description>China's space program has no plans to carry out unmanned 
missions to Mars before...</description>
    </item>

    <item rdf:about="http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1572">
        <title>Boeing wins Malaysian satellite contract</title>
        <link>http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1572</link>
        <description>Malaysian communications satellite operator Binariang 
Satellite Systems Sdn. Bhd. announced Friday that it will purchase...</description>
    </item>

    <item rdf:about="http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1571">
        <title>NASA selects aurora science mission</title>
        <link>http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1571</link>
        <description>NASA announced Thursday that it has selected a mission to 
study the geomagnetic storms that...</description>
    </item>

</channel>
</rss>

In this case, the RDF:about attributes provide a way to identify the resource being referenced, and the RDF:Seq links them together using this identification. The namespace using the dc: alias is referred to as the Dublin Core, a set of defined attributes for use in RDF, or Resource Definition Format, documents. The idea is that additional information can be added to the document using RDF, and because it's in a separate namespace, if the system doesn't use it, it's not a problem.

Typically, an RSS file is retrieved over HTTP, just as a web page would be, using a type of Web service. A later addition to the guide will discuss ways to accomplish this, but syndicating headlines involves simply creating the RSS file and making it retrievable.

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